Weekend Box Office: ‘Fifty Shades’ Whips the Competition

The Red Room is filled with green: The final installment of the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise is a hit. Fifty Shades Freeddebuted at the top of the weekend box office, with an estimated $38.8 million domestic gross. Here’s the full weekend chart:

Film

Weekend

Per Screen

Total

1

Fifty Shades Freed

$38,806,000

$10,299

$38,806,000

2

Peter Rabbit

$25,000,000

$6,711

$25,000,000

3

The 15:17 to Paris

$12,600,000

$4,142

$12,600,000

4

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

$9,825,000 (-10%)

$3,133

$365,656,871

5

The Greatest Showman

$6,400,000 (-16%)

$2,697

$146,535,870

6

Maze Runner: The Death Cure

$6,000,000 (-42%)

$2,053

$49,018,129

7

Winchester

$5,050,000 (-45%)

$2,036

$17,177,358

8

The Post

$3,500,000 (-33%)

$1,877

$72,836,520

9

The Shape of Water

$3,000,000 (-32%)

$1,685

$49,765,691

10

Den of Thieves

$2,870,000 (-37%)

$1,955

$40,951,323

$38.8 million is more than enough to make Fifty Shades the dominant movie in theaters last weekend. But in the long view, it’s not an outstanding debut. The first movie grossed $85.1 million in its first weekend in theaters back in 2013. That’s like $4 million per spanking! The new movie opening to less than half of that suggests a lot of viewers have been turned off by this series. Still, Fifty Shades Freed should wind up with at or near $100 million in its U.S. theatrical release, and the franchise as a whole has earned more than $1 billion worldwide. Not too bad for a couple of incredibly wealthy people living in Seattle who don’t do much except bicker and have sex.

In second place wasPeter Rabbit, the new, live-action adaptation of the classic children’s book series. In about 3,700 theaters nationwide, the movie grossed an estimated $25 million and earned a solid A- from audiences on CinemaScore. The film benefitted greatly from weak competition for family audiences; there’s really no other movie for young kids in the top ten, and with few other similar movies on the horizon, Peter Rabbit could be hopping around multiplexes for a good long while.

Meanwhile, three guys hopping around Europe were the subject of the number three film of the weekend, Clint Eastwood’s The 15:17 to Paris. Eastwood’s new film about an incredible act of real-life heroism grossed $12.6 million in its domestic debut. That’s barely a third of what Eastwood’s last movie, Sully, made in its opening weekend, but it’s basically on par with other recent Eastwood biopics have made in their debuts, like J. Edgar ($11.2 million) and Invictus ($8.6 million). One bad sign for the film: CinemaScore voters gave 15:17 just a B-, which suggests they won’t be telling their friends to go check it out for themselves.

In fourth place was Jumanji, which dropped just 10 percent from the prior weekend even as it slipped down the chart to make room for a trio of new wide releases. The film has now grossed $365 million in the U.S. alone. And in fifth place was late 2017’s other surprising word-of-mouth hit: The Greatest Showman which is now creeping towards $150 million in the United States with another very solid weekend.

The best per-screen average of the weekend belonged to Golden Exits, the latest film from New York-based filmmaker (and, full disclosure, former co-worker of mine) Alex Ross Perry. At one theater in the country, it earned $12,210. Fifty Shades Freed came in second place with an average PSA of $10,299 at each of its 3700 screens. And with that, I am done with sexual puns for at least another week.